How Cuban Chinese refugees in Puerto Rico built a life on ice cream, SF Chronicle, 2019

Photo by: Erika P. Rodriguez

Puerto Rican food doesn’t always look like its greatest hits. Puerto Rican food can look like empanada de jueyes, a flat dough disc seasoned with achiote and stuffed with crab. It can look like the endangered mondongo, Puerto Rico’s version of tripe menudo. It can look like tiny canned Vienna sausages floating in a sofrito-seasoned tomato sauce over rice. It can even look like our ancestral pasteles being smothered in American-influenced ketchup. (Note: This is a real thing; for the record, I’m Team No Ketchup.)

This is all to say that a cuisine, and its recipes, can change dramatically, evolving over time based on its people and their influences. Much like the rest of the world, immigrants have come to Puerto Rico in search of a better life or occupation. Even on an island, various cultures eventually influence the gastronomic and genetic makeup.

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